A tikker that clocks your lifespan

London - Running late? With Tikker you always are. This so-called “death watch” provides the ultimate momento mori: a no-frills LCD screen that counts down exactly how long you have left to live.

Built by a group of “designers, free-thinkers, lovers and life-afficionados”, the concept behind the Tikker is to remind wearers of the important things in life. Never has the Tikker’s slogan – “make every second count” – been applied more appropriately.

Fredrik Colting, the watch’s creator, says the idea came to him after his grandfather passed away: “It made me think about death and the transience of life, and I realised that nothing matters when you are dead. Instead what matters is what we do when we are alive,” says Colting on the Kickstarter page for the watch.

It seems that a lot of people agree with Colting. Funding for the watch began last month and the Tikker has already collected more than double its $25 000 (R250 000) goal, with more than 1 300 individuals coughing up $39 for the watch.

As well as the timepiece itself, the Tikker comes with a simple actuarial quiz that provides users with a (very) rough estimate of their time left on Earth. Users punch this number into the Tikker and then, without ceremony, the watch begins its final countdown.

“All we have to do is learn how to cherish the time and the life that we have been given,” says Tikker’s Kickstarter page, “And the best way to do this is to realise that seconds, days and years are passing never to come again.”

Of course, many sour-faced realists might point out that sometimes the right choices in life involve a certain amount of planning and patience, but at least the Tikker lets these individuals calculate exactly how forward-thinking they can afford to be.